Still the comfortable-looking baker shook his head. "I've heard pious talk before," he said; "it don't always hold good. I'm afraid--" he rose, as if to close the interview; Pippin rose too. His eyes roved round the pleasant shop, and came back, meeting the baker's squarely. "This is a dandy place!" he said slowly; "and you have the look of a dandy person, if you'll excuse the freedom. I'd like to work for you, and--I'd hate--to think--that you wouldn't help a guy that wanted help and wanted to work for it. I think you make a mistake; but it's your store, and what you say goes." With a little bow and another regretful look around him, Pippin turned toward the door. A moment, and he would be gone. His hand was on the latch. "Hold on!" said the baker. "I didn't say positive. I'm not a hard man by nature, only--" "I bet you ain't!" said Pippin. "That's why I say I think you make a mistake--" He turned back with his smile that seemed to warm and brighten the whole shop. "Try me, Mister! Try me a week, and see for yourself. No satisfaction, no pay, as it says on the medicine bottles. And I couldn't pinch anything off'n you now if I wanted to. I've put you wise, and you'll be on the watch, see?" The baker laughed in spite of himself. "We'll make it a week, then!" he said. "But not a word to my wife of where you come from. She's timoreous, and she wouldn't sleep a wink all night." "Now!" said Pippin, "I wouldn't break that good lady's rest, not for all the elegant things in this bakeshop." CHAPTER IV PIPPIN GOES TO CYRUS Pippin always looked back on the weeks he spent in Kingdom as one of his good times. Folks were so everlastingly good to him; they couldn't hardly have been better, he thought, not unless they had been your own. Mrs. Baxter, the baker's wife, was like--well, call it an aunt. Yes, she sure was like a good aunt, and equally so was her uncle; as for Buster, the boy--well, that was Pippin's moral of a boy. Buster would grow up a fine man, you see if he didn't. He'd _better_! As to looking for the grace of God like he promised Elder Hadley, why, he didn't have to. It stuck right out of 'em, like--like electric lights! Pippin lodged with the Baxters and paid his board in work, lighting the fires in the morning, heating the ovens, sweeping out the shop, and doing a "hand's turn" in many directions. Mrs. Baxter declared Providence sent him just at that time, when Father had caught his hand in the oven door and lamed him so; she did not know what upon earth they would have done without Pippin. Indeed he showed himself so handy that after the first week Mr. Baxter offered him a permanent job, declared he would make him the smartest baker in the county. Pippin promised to think it over. He loved the smell of new bread; he loved to handle the dough, and rake out the glowing coals; yes, it was a pleasant trade, it sure was; but yet--but yet--